WOW! I got so many reviews for a prelude chapter! cries with joy thank you guys so much! I never do the reviewer replies, so I'm not gunna start now, but hands pocky to everyone there is your reward! Now if I could get people to review for bound and gagged I'd be thrilled! hint, hint wink, wink nudge, nudge
Draco munched happily on the bits of food Potter was shoving into his coat pocket while the staff members weren't looking, careful not to bite his hand, lest he stop giving food so generously.
"Where's Draco?" The small Hufflepuff questioned, curiosity painting her voice.
"Who cares?" Potter mumbled, the words literally reverberating through Draco oddly, from being pressed too close to the other male. He scratched him a bit on accident. He accidentally did it on purpose. The by in question winced slightly, but 'coughed' jostling Draco's poor ferret body.
After dinner was over, Draco was removed from the pocket to find that they were outside. Things smelled twice as strong. He could still smell that awful crap Pansy bathed in everyday, and wrinkled his nose. Potter smelled much better than her. Hey, he was Potter, but right about now, Potter was the love of his life compared to where Pansy was currently residing. It suddenly struck him that he needed to use the restroom. Now. And he would have to do it like a ferret. Pansy was going to die. Slowly and very, very painfully, she would die, because he was going to kill her when he was human again.
After he scurried away from Potter and to behind a tree to do his business, and returned, a thought stop him in his little ferret tracks. What if he never became a human again? What if he was stuck as Potter's little pet forever, having to be fed from inside a jacket until they left Hogwarts and then who knew what?
He sought the only comfort he had by letting Potter hold him close.
"You alright, Tatsu? I hope I didn't feed you anything wrong…" Potter questioned.
Nope. Just fine, I'm only a ferret, and probably stuck that way forever. Just fine…
"I don't know why, but I don't like talking to people much. I always spill my guts out to my pets and such. But it's not like you can tell anyone, right? I guess that's why. I love Ron and Hermione so much it hurts, but I don't know if someday that's going to change, and they'll tell everyone things I don't want the whole world to know. That's why I don't have a journal, because people could read it. Like that awful Rita Skeeter.
Hermione may think she shut her up for good, but all she has to do is become a registered animagus, and she could print again."
Now to Draco, it wasn't a surprise that she was an animagus, he knew, because he talked to her in that form, but what did surprise him was that the little mud-blood Granger had black mailed her! Some innocent little Gryffindor.
"Man, Malfoy didn't let that one drop for months. I don't cry about my parents. I didn't even know them. How can you be upset about someone you never even knew? And Snape was right. My father was an arrogant prat. I was Snape and my father was Malfoy. It made me sick, because I tried so hard to be such a good person, and they said I was like my father. I wish I could have known him, just to see if he was better as he grew up. My mum was nice, though. Really nice. Reminded me eerily of Mrs. Weasley." Potter had smiled for a brief moment and was stroking down Draco's back while he talked, now his hand just lay there and his eyes welled with tears.
"I know why I wasn't invited for Christmas. I didn't save Charlie. During the war I could have saved him, but I tripped. It's my fault he's dead. She probably hates me now." A tear dripped in front of Draco's face. "You know something? I didn't kill Voldemort with magic."
What?
"I stabbed him, with a piece of glass. Just over and over until he stopped fighting." another tear fell from now dead green eyes. "I'm not a hero…I'm a murderer. So many people died because of me, and then I took a life all on my own. And people cheered. They danced and rejoiced, and sang, because I murdered someone." Potter slumped off into uncontrollable sobs for a while, while Draco processed this information. He had blamed Potter himself, for all the deaths of his friends parents, his father's imprisonment, his mother's permanent limp, the scar the marred his hip in an angry arch from a misplaced spell.
He never imagined how bad it was tearing the teen apart inside.
Potter was always laughing with his friends, and wild and crazy, as if he had a life now that the war was over. How could he hurt that bad and no body know?
Because…he really doesn't have anybody anymore, does he? Draco thought, believing it for the first time. He nuzzled the boys neck and lick a small salty tear, earning a slight smile from the boy. Somehow, that meant more to Draco than anything, and that worried him.
Before Draco could register what was happening, He was being carried but a pair of strong tan hands into the bathroom.
OH NO! not the shower! I do not want to see potter naked. Ever. He thought panicking and thrashing.
"Hey, calm down. It's ok. Here." Potter soothed, setting him on a big fluffy green towel. "You stay there while I take a bath ok I don't think ferrets can swim and I don't want to find out." he smiled, and Draco closed his little ferret eyes as tight as he could so as not to glimpse anything. After he heard the tell tale splashing of water, he peeked an eye open, and sighed at the lack of any bare limbs in sight.
He walked around a bit, taking in his surroundings. Shower stalls in the far corner, a bathtub that potter was currently relaxing in. Toilet stalls, and a wall with a mirror all the way to the floor. He just had to look didn't he? Just as Potter sat up and ran soap across his bronze chest, toned and muscular, and Draco almost drooled, vaguely wondering if ferrets could drool.
I can not be attracted to POTTER! He mentally shrieked, burying his nose in the fluffy green towel Potter had supplied, and waited for it to be over.
After an eerily long time, he heard the sounds of a person lifting themselves out of water.
He buried himself further into the water, until he potter picked him out of the bath towel and carried him off.
A few days passed rather the same as the first day, though Harry was silent when he cried at night.
"Come on, shower time." Harry muttered into "tatsu's" face happily, running a hand through draco's rather limp ferret hair.
OH NO!
But Draco was out of luck it seemed, as Harry divested himself of clothing, to closed ferret eyes and grabbed the helpless Boy who Turned Ferret. He opened his beady blue eyes in shock when hot water hit him and he scrambled up Potter's bare shoulder, and unwillingly looked down. The tan shoulders were covered with lines, and scars, like someone had beaten him with a whip. Draco let a ferrety squeak out.
"Hey, Tatsu, careful. That's another thing nobody knows about. My uncle got drunk over the summer. Beat me with a belt. and then he death eaters copied his idea. They still hurt sometimes."
Draco inwardly cried with shame at himself, the hopelessness of the situation, and the pain of the boy he had once hated. He didn't like Potter, but he couldn't hate him anymore. He tried. He felt nothing in the briefest resemblance of hate for Potter. And tomorrow was Christmas. The school had sent search parties after him, yet no one could find him. Small wonder. But he saw Dumbledore twinkle at him, which was never a good sign. He might leave him like this!
His thoughts were interrupted as Harry scrubbed soap into Draco's fur. The boy ferret sighed and leaned into the touch. It couldn't hurt after all. It's not like potter would ever find out if he had a choice.
He belatedly realized it was Christmas Eve.
After a filling breakfast of pieces of Harry's pancakes, he was taken out to the lake, were he frolicked in the snow and rolled around in the cold, pouncing on Harry every now and the and eating big mouthfuls of snow.
For once, Harry didn't cry that night.
When morning arrived, Draco perked up, expecting to see the about the same size mound of presents as he himself usually got. He was shocked to see about two or three wrapped gifts. Evidently Harry was as well.
"well… I bet this one it my sweater, Mrs. Weasley sends one every year." He smiled. He looked at the presents and found the cards. "Oh. It's from Hagrid." Harry looked a little downhearted and opened it, to find a box of chocolate frogs. He opened one and decapitated it, before setting it back down to open the next gift. It was from Dumbledore, a small mirror.
"it says you can see anyone anywhere in the world. Neat." Harry didn't sound like it was neat.
The last one was a book, old, worn, and water stained from Granger, wrapped carelessly and obviously last minute. It was about potions, Harry's worst and least favorite subject. And that was it. Harry opened the window and sat down.
"I'm sure the others are just...running late." Harry muttered. Draco curled up and watched. And watched and watched. It was twilight before Harry moved his frozen body from the window sill and picked up the mirror.
"The weaslys." he croaked.
"Who's this from?" Draco heard over the mirror.
"That potter boy. Just toss it. You aren't still friends with him are you Ron?"
"He thinks I am. He's so dense. I'm not going to get into any more trouble over him. Sure, he could saved the wretched Narcissa Malfoy, but he couldn't save Charlie? What kind of friend would do that?"
The mirror dropped out of Harry's hands and slid across the floor, not breaking, amazingly.
Harry wailed. Like a lost soul. He pushed his face into the pillow and shook with silent, wracking sobs. Draco flared with anger. They were supposed to be his family. They were all he fucking had left and they would say tat? He couldn't save everybody! Even he knew that.
The boy pushed himself off of the bed and in to the bathroom, and draco heard the shower run.
After a few hours, Harry came back, and threw himself n the bed carelessly, still damp, and in a towel. Draco immediately curled around him wuffing at his ears and sniffling his cheeks, giving him whatever comfort he could.
"It's not fair. I want to die….why couldn't Voldemort kill me? I don't want his anymore…" Harry whispered, kissing Draco's head, and soaking his little ferret face with tears. Draco's heart clenched uncomfortably, and he buried himself under Harry's chin, wishing there were more he could do, and denying the little feelings sneaking up on him.
I know, it's shorts, but, I had to leave it there, or the whole story would be shortened by a chapter. I realllllly didn't want to stop, so you'll get a chapter much sooner. I just moved from Florida to north Carolina, and I had no computer, and then I didn't have the files. But I'm back and you shall never be rid of me.